


Defining Moments (This Is What We Live For)

by Krasimer



Series: Khdo Doo Zrxqgv dqg Qhyhu Edfn Grzq [10]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Grunkle Ford Needs A Hug, Grunkle Stan Needs A Hug, Grunkle Stan's Backstory, Grunkle Stan-centric, Grunkle4Grandpa, Ma Pines lives, Minor Carla McCorkle/Grunkle Stan | Stanley "Stanford" Pines, Protective Grunkle Stan, Protective Pines Family, Sad Grunkle Stan, Sea Grunkles, Shermie is quietly amused when his mom starts yelling at his brothers, Smart Grunkle Stan, Teenage Dipper Pines, Teenage Mabel Pines, Their dad needs to find his chill.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanley Pines has a good family. They are, in his opinion, some of the best people. <br/>He'll figure out how to live with them, even if it kills him.</p><p>(He didn't know he was a father until a letter arrived to tell him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defining Moments (This Is What We Live For)

"Ma?"

From the kitchen, Shermie Pines's voice sounded, worry in his tone. "Ma, are you alright?"

The old woman's breathing stuttered, her eyes wide as she looked at Stan and Ford, her hands clasping together against her chest. "Is-" she swallowed, took a deep breath, then a step forward. "Is that my Stanley?"

"Hey ma," Stan greeted her weakly, his own eyes wide. When Ford took Mabel's presents out of his hands, he stepped forward as well, his steps fumbling. 

Shermie came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel that he slung over his shoulder. "Ma, what's-" he caught sight of his brothers, frowning. "Wait, why are there two of them?" he looked towards his adopted son, who had come into the room at some point. "Ma, wanna explain?"

"I told'ya before," she said, her voice quiet. "You had brothers. A set a' twins, just like your kiddos here," she wiped at her face, then nodded and marched across the room. When she got within reach, she dragged both Stan and Ford into a back-cracking hug. "The two a' ya!" she shuddered, tears dripping onto the sleeve of Stan's shirt. "Look at this!" 

"This..." Stan cleared his throat, one arm coming up to awkwardly hug her just as tightly. "Ma, this wasn't how I wanted you to...To find out. I-" he looked over her head, towards Shermie, then Thomas. "You said somethin' about a Grandma Pines, I figured you just meant- You have a wife, I thought you meant her mom or something!"

Thomas shook his head. "Meredith's mom has been gone for a while now."

Ma Pines drew back, studying Stan and Ford for a moment. "I'd know the two a' yah anywhere," she whispered, tears still sliding down her face. "My boys! My two boys are alive and well!"

For a second it seemed like she was just going to sit there and stare at them until she frowned and unhooked her hand from Stan's shoulder. From there, she smacked him upside the head, then propped her fist on her hip. "Stanley Marshall Pines, what in the Hell do you think you were doin', disappearin' and dyin' like that?" She turned to Ford, shaking him by her hold on his collar. "And you, Stanford Filbrick Pines, where have you been?"

"Those are both really long stories, Ma, and it ain't that easy to-"

"Did you really get into a car wreck like that?" she asked, her eyes switching over to him, a sharp look that warned of danger. 

"Well, uh, no, but-"

She narrowed her eyes at him, her red-painted lips pulled into the same frown he remembered. "You couldn't've called? I spend the last thirty years worried sick about my boy, the one I thought was the only one left!"

"About that," Ford began, shrinking back when she turned her glare on him. 

"Was there somethin' that meant yah needed ta hide?" she demanded, both her hands in fists on her hips. Off to the side, Stan could see Mabel watching, could practically see the stars in her eyes. Oh boy, the kid was gonna mimic Ma for ages.

"Actually," Ford looked to Stan for help, floundering over his words. "Well, there was, um, there were a few things that made contact difficult,"

She looked back at Ford, the toe of her shoe tapping on the floor. 

"Uh, Stan?"

"Stanford Pines, drop the accent I know yah picked up at the fancy college a' yers," she scolded, her fists still on her hips as she studied his face. After a few seconds, she relaxed slightly, worry overtaking her anger. "Ford, honey, yah got so much stress on yer face. What happened to yah?" she looked at Stan. "Yah both do. What happened to my boys?"

Feeling ready to cry again, Stan's head ducked down, his gaze pinned on the floor. 

"C'mon, that ain't my little free spirit at all," she coaxed, her voice going soft. One of her hands came to rest against his cheek, making him look at her. "Last time I saw you in person, you was all of eighteen years old, Stanley. What happened?"

"Ford and I got into a fight," Stan mumbled, cuffing roughly at his face to try and clear away the few tears. "Somethin' happened to him, and he- It was hard, ma. I didn't mean to, but I did somethin' stupid."

"...I did too," Ford added in, clasping his hands together, pinching his lips shut and worrying at the inside of one. The packages were on the floor by his feet, and he looked worried. "You remember what I studied, right, ma?"

"Yeah. Same paranormal stuff yah always did like," she smiled at him, her other hand coming to rest on his shoulder. "Yah went off to college and became a fancy Doctor of spooky-scary. Yer father hated it, but I was so proud a' yah."

"I was contacted by a creature and-" Ford cleared his throat this time, looking somewhat ashamed. "I created a portal. Well, when your last letter arrived, telling me where Stan was, I was..." he looked at his brother.

"Ford was goin' off the deep end a' the pool, ma. I went to help him when I got his postcard, I couldn't not," Stan gave a nervous smile to both her and his brother. "When we got together, Ford and I fought and he- I accidentally sent him through his portal. When I realized what had happened, I- I knew I couldn't...Couldn't..."

"He faked his death and spent thirty years tryin' to find me," Ford filled in, some of his accent coming back.

Dipper smiled encouragingly when Stan looked at him.

"I didn't want to come visit when he was still gone, Pop never really..." Stan shook his head. 

"I want yah ta listen ta me very carefully," Ma Pines made both of them look at her, her face almost deadly serious. "The man I married was a rat bastard who threw one a' his kids away when he was angry. He ain't someone yah should ever think about, 'kay? Shermie and I attended his funeral outta respect fer the rest a' his family, but that's it," she nodded once, her expression still somewhat angry. "He had a bag packed for my little free spirit the moment there was even slightly anythin' done wrong."

"Grandma?" Thomas raised a hand, his face somewhere between slightly afraid and amused. "How about we go to the dining room and settle down for dinner? Everything's all ready, Meredith wants to see everyone."

Shermie nodded, grinning almost too much as he cleared his throat. "So," he began, walking over to his mom and brothers. "I've got two again?"

"You never really stopped having two," Ford grumbled. "Our father was..." he glanced at Stan. "Our father was a jerk. Plain and simple."

"Exactly," Ma Pines grinned, pulling her hands back so that she could cross her arms over her chest. "I'd've left him long before, months before, he kicked Stan out if it hadn't been fer Shermie's arrival. Had plans, never gotta go through with 'em."

Stan pushed his glasses out of the way, rubbing at his eyes. "...Oh, Ford, don't forget, the kids need those boxes," his voice was raspy, thirty plus years of emotions smacking him all at once. With a sniff, he settled his glasses back into place, motioning for Mabel when she looked up at him excitedly. "C'mon kiddo, Grunkles got you presents."

"Yes!" she pumped her fist in the air, then sunk a little low when she looked at her dad. "So, uh, I suppose Dipper and I should tell you why we're not surprised..."

He raised an eyebrow at her, crossing his arms over his chest. 

"Hey, we sent you a letter," Dipper added, "We told you about this before it happened, we mentioned it a couple of years ago. The summer we turned thirteen, back when you first sent us to stay with Grunkle Stan for a while? That's when this all happened. You mentioned having sent a letter too, and I kind of figured that meant you believed us."

Thomas wilted, looking almost guilty as he looked away. "It just seemed so...Fairytale, like it couldn't be true."

"We came home with nightmares and a pig, we talked about a giant triangle that tried to kill us, what part of the actual trauma seemed made up to you?" Dipper frowned at him, his hands clenching tightly at his sides. 

"Wait, my great-grandkids told yah about this, about my sons bein' alive and well, and yah just ignored them?" 

His eyes going wide as Ma Pines's renewed anger was turned on him, Thomas shrugged. "It seemed too weird to be true, I mean-" he grumbled something, shoving his face into his hands for a second. "Would you have believed it? There were stories about Man-bulls and gnomes and unicorns and a talking corn chip named Bill. It didn't seem real, and the nightmares...I thought they were about something else, Mabel has always been a little..."

"A little _what_?" 

Stan's voice was icy, almost enough to freeze Thomas in his tracks. To his credit, Thomas actually stopped stuttering for a bit, his eyes wide as he looked at his daughter and his birth father. Stan growled, his eyebrows drawing low. "A little _what_? Too weird? Too strange? Too silly? What?"

"She is silly, she always has been. I love my daughter, but-"

"No, there's no but on the end of that. 'I love my daughter' should be the full sentence, dead stop, period. There shouldn't be conditions or- Or disgust for something that she is. Mabel Pines is a good person, and you are startin' to seem like you aren't, buddy," Stan put a hand on his granddaughter's shoulder, pulling her into a tight, one-armed hug. He could feel her starting to tremble. "She's a dreamer and she's an artist and she's a good person, don't you dare take that away from her!"

"I just meant- Look, they have to grow up at one point, and Mabel gets teased at school for how she is. I just want her to be safe," Thomas looked at Stan, studying him. "I'm not going to kick her out, she's my daughter."

"Yeah, and Pops was my dad, look how that turned out."

"Well maybe, if we're on the subject of parents," the younger man's face was red now, anger obvious. "Maybe you should have stuck around to raise me since you're my father!" 

The entire room fell silent.

Dipper's slow double-blink was almost audible as he looked between his dad and Stan. "Uh," he began quietly.

"Look," Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. "Until I got your letter in the mail, I didn't even know you were my son. Carla McCorkle and I broke up about, if I did the math right, seven months before you were born. Her dad chased me off because I was the homeless bum living out of his car. I knew you existed right about when the kids were sent to stay with me and you and your wife called me."

Thomas's face fell, his entire body going slack. "...What?"

"I did the math on that, too. Shermie was way too young to be their grandpa, not unless he was a dad at the age of thirteen. Which," Stan shrugged. "I might not have been surprised by? I guess? Anyway," he sighed. "So now the kids know, I know why you're angry, and you know why I wasn't there. Can we go eat now?"

When he went to head into the other room, a pair of hands around his wrist stopped him. "Wait, Grunkle Stan, are we really your grandkids?" Mabel's eyes were wide, the warm brown color a match to his own.

"Heh," Stan kneeled down slightly, meeting her eyes. "Well, sweetheart, you didn't get your Gram and Shermie's green eyes and your dad there has brown ones."

Ford laughed, picking up the presents again. "Stanley, I told you that you were smart."

"Yeah yeah, shut it," Stan waved him off, his cheeks an embarrassed red when he turned back to Mabel. "You gonna keep being, uh...Weird?"

"Oh, definitely," Mabel nodded solemnly, looking at her dad. "And I'm not picked on as much anymore, I found a group of people like me. Plus, I have Dipper. I don't need a lot of people to like me, just a few special ones."

She took Stan's hand again, her other fingers clenching in the fabric of Ford's sweater, starting to walk towards the dining room. Over her head, Stan grinned at his brother, chuckling quietly. "See, this is why Piedmont is too boring for them."

"I think the whole world is too boring for us," Mabel interjected before Ford could answer. "Right Dipper?"

"Exactly," Dipper nodded, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. 

Stan's laughter grew louder. "Well, maybe you can fix that. Go and change the world, right sweetheart? It ain't ready for you, make it be."

She nodded eagerly, turning with her own laugh when Ma Pines's hand patted her head. "Precisely!" her smile was infectious as she turned her head to look at her family. "Lookit Dipper! We've got a lot of family!"

"I know," his own smile was small but no less truly happy. "Why do we get presents?"

Ford blinked, without words for the second time in the last hour. "Well,"

"We missed you. Aren't we allowed to get you presents?" Stan filled in for him, clapping a hand on Ford's back. "You each get two, we chose somethin' we hope you're gonna like."

"Yes," Ford nodded, taking a quick look around the room, quietly looking over the new surroundings. "We do hope for that."

For the first time in a long time, he felt relaxed. At his side, Stan grinned, shuffling the boxes out of his arms and handing them off to each twin. 

This was family.

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, you wanted sad Pines moments, right? You- You wanted the Stans and their mom crying, right?
> 
> Well, here it is. Mabel and Dipper's dad is kind of a dick because he feels betrayed and abandoned except, oh, whoops, Stan didn't know he had a kid until the letter arrived telling him about it.


End file.
